Bringing the crack since December 2003

Aug. 15th, 2017

Aug. 15th, 2017

Set the wayback machine to Action Comics 273. Supergirl was still staying in the orphanage where Superman had put her, and still wearing the blue frock that looked like it had started life as a cheerleader costume. The sartorial madness of 70's era Supergirl was still a decade in the future. In the straitlaced world of 1961 comics, when a heroine needed a makeover, they didn't go to the tailor, their alter ego went to the hairdresser. And they did it by asking the readers to participate in a poll.

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat amongst yourselves.

The atrocious events in Charlottesville aroused the ire and blanket condemnation of pretty much everyone (Even senior Republicans were straightforward about that), with one notable exception of course.

As one commentator put it, when the people who made the Tiki Torches the White Supremacists were using (Adding a quirky, yet jejeune aspect to their hate march), offers a more literate and resounding put-down of their actions than the President of the United States, it's a REALLY depressing, and worrying, situation to be in.

Oh, and when juvenile brinksmanship tactics bringing the world that bit closer to a possible nuclear exchange is STILL the SECOND worst thing you've done in a week, words really do fail.

At the other end of the scale, the new "Duck Tales" premiere aired, to very good reviews, and Disney have made the whole episode available on their Youtube channel if you're in the US. The rest of us can just... wait, I suppose.

The tone and ending of the forthcoming Justice League movie are being changed, most likely (but perhaps not 100%) due to Joss Whedon coming on board. Originally intended to end with Steppenwolf, the bad guy, being defeated, but Darkseid arriving on Earth anyway (making the whole movie essentially a lead in for a sequel), Darkseid will now not appear, giving the movie an actual ending of it's own.

Oh, and I can recommend the podcast The Orbiting Human Circus (of the air) from some surreal, quirky diversions as we peer into the life of a janitor working in the Eiffel Tower, home of the world's most popular radio show and it's unusual acts?

Ah, 1970. The "Mod Squad" had been on the air for three years. Over in Britain, "Mod" styles were fading fast, but in offices of DC comics, where "hip" and "trendy" editors were always proud to be in the vanguard of all the latest cultural trends ("vanguard means in the rear, right?"), it was time for Supergirl to get slightly less behind the times, and a new "Mod" outfit was exactly the thing. Creator credits were still too radical for DC back then, but the Internet knows the blame is all on the head of writer/artist Mike Sekowsky.

And that is the tale of how Supergirl hung up her cheerleader frock after, what, 12 years of wearing the exact same thing every day? Something tells me she would have changed things up a lot sooner if not for wanting to avoid a fight with her stick-in-the-mud cousin and his small town Kansas prudery.

The Shocker is a Spider-Man villain that is somewhere in the high-B low-A area. Whenever he and Spider-Man fight, he always gives Spider-Man a hard time. Yet he never quite "hit the big time." I used to think that was because he had no connection to Peter Parker or Peter's friends.

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